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20/20 T H E C OMMU N I T Y


The writing’s on the wall for …


by SIMON NASH, HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR Carey Olsen


the selection interview


There is no doubt that in the financial sector the recruitment of the right talent is a strategically critical differentiator of business success. Quite simply those firms which attract, select and retain the best people will deliver more services to their clients and at better quality enabling a premium price to be charged. On the other hand those businesses who fail to attract the best, and even worse, who recruit unsuitable candidates, saddle themselves with additional costly management challenges of managing underperformance and dealing with expensive employee exits, while their clients pay the price in inferior services. The question of who is taken on is therefore of vital financial importance.


It has been convincingly shown that the selection interview alone is a relatively poor technique for making the difficult choices about who to recruit. But not all selection interviews are the same. Occupational psychologists have compiled decades of field and laboratory research into what elements make for a better or worse interview. In order to compare one set of interviews to another a common measurement is required. If you are interested in correctly spotting the best candidates and avoiding the dodgy ones, you need a measure that correlates between success at interview with successful performance in the job role. Psychologists call this "predictive validity" and the results are remarkably consistent over time, sector and role type.


For example, studies have shown that interviews featuring trained interviewers have higher predictive validity than untrained – quite an obvious finding, but it runs counter to the intuitions of many seasoned managers who are convinced that they


are an excellent judge of character and can spot potential based on their intuition alone. Of course what they are really saying is that their preference is to make investment decisions such as this on the basis of feelings rather than on facts – which is not something most clients want to hear from their professional advisor.


of behavioural attributes that have been selected as relevant for the organisation. The benefit of the competency based interview is that is applies a consistent standard across all interviews and is relatively straightforward for a trained interviewer to assess generic competencies for a variety of roles. This can be a worthwhile exercise for those businesses prepared to invest in the design and implementation of such a framework, but many organisations fail to implement a competency infrastructure that is sufficiently robust as to displace social and emotional standards for selection, progression and reward.


Another key finding is that structured interviews have higher predictive validity than unstructured. In a structured interview all candidates are interviewed to a common format, often with a degree of prepared question areas, within which a skilful interviewer will improvise to probe and verify. It is relatively straightforward to design a structured interview format and question bank, but it would be misleading to expect the adoption of a standardised form to deliver great improvements in hiring accuracy without an accompanying programme to train the panellists in how to best use the new tool, and a good degree of consistency between the trained panellists.


Much has been written in recent years about the advantages of competency based interviews. In a competency based interview the candidate is assessed against a pre-determined set


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Beyond the interview there are a number of other ways in which the process of selection may be made more scientifically valid. Standardised Cognitive Ability Tests are an excellent way of making measurable assessments among candidates. These were initially created as tests of general intelligence by the US Military in World War One, but have been developed more recently to provide accurate assessment of modern business aptitudes such as verbal reasoning and commercial analysis. The majority of reputable cognitive ability tests are regulated publications; that is to say they may only be purchased, administered and interpreted by a trained user, who is certified by the British Psychological Society. Businesses which use cognitive ability tests as part of an integrated selection process can expect to see a measurable increase in their hiring accuracy, leading to financial gains through improved productivity, effectiveness and retention.


In addition to the above tools for aptitude assessment there are a


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